I got the most unusual call from a little Indian boy yesterday asking if I wanted to go see Harry Potter at the midnight release. I’m not really a Potter fan; I got the books from the library and watched the movies, but never really got into it. And I’ve managed to forget most of the details hours after reading the books. It seems that nothing of any importance happens until the last fifty pages of the book, filled with other anecdotes in a verbose style.
The movie was entertaining. I sat through it and enjoyed watching it. The two movies I had seen previously were “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” and “Spiderman 3”, so I had lowered my expectations going into this movie. The dialogue wasn’t cheesy, and the acting felt authentic, mostly. I empathized with the soulless administration of Hogwarts and most of Harry’s troubles.
I wasn’t truly engrossed in it, though. I blame my companion for some of that, but I was never entirely transported to the movie’s magical realm. The Harry-Cho plot-line felt contrived. The writers did a great job of condensing a much longer book into a normal length film, but the romance didn’t feel right at all. It wasn’t important to the story, didn’t develop the characters, wasn’t itself fully developed, and wasn’t performed particularly well. It felt like it was added simply because it was in the book—which I already mentioned was scattered—and would make a great addition to the trailer to sucker people in.
Being at the premiere wasn’t as cool as I was hoping either. I didn’t see anyone dressed up, and it wasn’t as chaotic as I was hoping. Other than having a difficult time getting a seat, it wasn’t as exciting as Return of the Sith. Oh well; there are another 2 to go if I want to see that.
There are some movies that leave me sitting there, still, in awe, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the work. Then there are others, like FF2, that get a laugh. OotP was somewhere in the middle. It certainly wasn’t life-changing, though I did enjoy it. The credits started rolling, and I stood up, ready to go.